Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

In case you’ve been living in a cave, it’s official. Page rank is dead. Well, not really dead. Just not something you’re going to have to worry about anymore. In case you haven’t heard the latest, this article is simply going to fill you in on the basic details and then give you this author’s opinion on the whole situation. Speaking from almost seven years of experience online, you might want to hear me out.

Okay, let’s get down to the basics of what has just happened. Essentially, Google has dropped page rank from Webmaster Tools. In a nutshell, what Google has said is that they’ve been telling people for a long time (they didn’t have to hit me over the head) that they shouldn’t be paying too much attention to page rank, that it’s just one of many factors that decide a site’s relevance. And since it’s only updated a couple times of year, it’s really not that relevant.

Ho-hum.

Sorry if I sound like “So tell me something that matters” but the truth is, I have never put much stock in page rank. Most of my sites have page rank 1 or 2 with a few 4′s. Ironically, some of my PR 2 sites get more traffic and make more money than my PR 4 sites. So what does PR mean in the grand scheme of things? Well, here is one thing that it’s NOT going to mean anymore that really have me jumping for joy.

No longer will marketers be able to take advantage of other marketer’s naivety by selling them page rank packages that only end up turning legitimate sites into spammer paradise. A lot of the nonsense that goes on with PR is going to finally end because it’s just not going to matter anymore. But okay, what DOES matter? Take this from where it’s coming.

What matters is putting up a site with relevant content and giving visitors what they want. Too many marketers forget that there are REAL people on the other end of this equation, people with real problems who are looking for real solutions. They don’t want to end up at a review blog that is nothing more than an advertisement for an affiliate product. They want to be able to make informed decisions as to what to buy and what to stay away from. Maybe if more marketers would concentrate on providing value, we wouldn’t have had the page rank wars in the first place.

I for one am glad that PR is dead. You can moan about it and cry in your Cheerios, or you can embrace it and use legitimate SEO tactics to get your site up the SERPs.

I know what I’m going to do.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of busting your behind for peanuts online? Go to my web site and find out how I earn a monthly income that exceeds 5 figures and how I can help YOU do the same. Get your free report at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html

Let me start off by saying that there is nothing wrong with being stats conscious. However, some people really take this to an extreme. When you start to allow your affiliate promotions to be solely dictated by stats with absolutely no room for human decision, that’s when you run into trouble. This article is going to go into three areas that I think people get way too hung up on when they decide to promote or not promote a product. I think you’ll want to give this some thought.

At the top of my list is gravity. I know affiliate marketers who won’t even go near a product unless there are hundreds of other affiliates successfully promoting the product already. Conversely, I know people who won’t promote a product unless nobody knows about it. They want to be the FIRST affiliate on the block. There are hazards to both approaches. With a heavily promoted product, you’re going up against a lot of big competition. That won’t be easy. With a brand new product, you have no idea if it’s even going to sell. Point is, you need to look at your own marketing skills and the market itself to determine whether or not to sell something…not just the gravity.

Another stat affiliate marketers get hung up on is conversion percentage of the sales page, not that this is even so easy to find out. Most product creators either don’t keep accurate stats, inflate them, or, if they’re not good, won’t share them. Conversion percentage can be EASILY killed by one affiliate sending tons of non targeted traffic to a sales page. So forget about this as a guide for whether or not you’re going to sell a product. It’s not anywhere near a reliable indicator.

Finally, we have dollars per sale. I can’t believe how inflexible some affiliates are on this. They either won’t sell anything unless it’s a big ticket item of several hundred dollars or won’t touch anything over $47 because they’re afraid they can’t sell a big ticket item. There is a market for every priced product. Your ability to sell it has nothing to do with the price but your own marketing skills.. And for those who won’t touch cheaper items, the volume you can create from these items can more than make up for the low price.

Point is, too many people get hung up on stats and because of this, they restrict their opportunities. By being a little more open minded about things, you might find that you actually end up making more sales.

It’s certainly something to consider.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

I get a lot of questions about what makes a good keyword to use. The ideas that some people have about what constitutes a good keyword are so off base that it has to make you chuckle just a little bit. Well, in this article, I’m going to get right down to the nitty-gritty of keywords and lay out the truth behind what makes a good keyword and a lousy one. I think you’re going to want to read this.

Okay, let’s start off with one misconception. Many people think that a good keyword is one that gets searched for a lot but doesn’t have a lot of competition. Forgetting about the competition part for now, just getting a lot of searches doesn’t make the word a good one. If I look up the word “money” does that tell you anything about what it is that I’m REALLY looking for? I could be looking for the definition of what money is for all you know. It tells you nothing about what I want. So number of searches means nothing.

As for competition, this is another thing that drives me up the wall. Let me ask you a question. Would you rather use a keyword that gets 100,000 searches a month and have 1 million competing sites or one that only gets 30 searches a month and have no competing sites? Personally, I’d rather have a shot at a decent piece of the pie of a large market than the whole pie of a puny market. But everybody is different. However, think about it. Unless you’re selling a $3,000 item, how much money are you going to make out of 30 searches a month?

In a nutshell, a good keyword is one where, for starters, you know EXACTLY what the person is looking for. For example, “how to get out of debt” is a GREAT one. This person wants to know how to get out of debt. It’s as clear a day. Also, you want one where there is a big market. You want to know that there are products out there for that market and that they are selling well. That to me is what makes a great keyword or phrase.

Naturally, you want to test these out for yourself and see how they work for you. But if you follow my general advice, I think you’ll find that the phrases YOU choose will work well for you.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of busting your behind for peanuts online? Go to my web site and find out how I earn a monthly income that exceeds 5 figures and how I can help YOU do the same. Get your free report at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html

You have to love copywriters. They’re always finding new things to play around with in order to increase conversions to their sales pages. One day it’s headlines, the next day it’s bullet points and so on and so on. Well, the recent fad has been to mess around with buy now buttons. You know, those little things that prospects click on that take them to the order page. There seems to be a fascination with these little buggers of late. And word has it, the “Add To Cart” version is kicking some serious backside…especially if it’s a certain color. Okay, enough of the madness. This article is going to give you the non hyped truth about these buy now buttons so that you don’t go crazy with them.

I think it was Perry Belcher who first came up with the idea to change the “Buy Now” to the “Add To Cart” variety and reported that the results were fantastic. The conversions increased significantly. So everybody started jumping on the bandwagon and changed their “Buy Now” buttons to “Add To Cart” buttons. Well, almost everybody. This old fashioned copywriter, after some testing, saw that the results weren’t what everybody was raving about, not to say that the button can’t work well in SOME instances.

And therein lies the rub to this whole bit of insanity. See, everybody’s business is different as it their target market, product and sales page. There are WAY too many factors involved with conversions to just make a blanket statement that changing your “Buy Now” button to an “Add To Cart” button is going to increase conversions, not that that’s what Perry said. All he said was it increased for HIM. That’s the key to all this. Each person is going to have different results. My results were less than stellar. So I went back to my original button, which if you want to know, isn’t a buy now button. What do I use.

I don’t use a button at all. I use a text link that says “Download Instantly.” Let me tell you, from my testing, it works MUCH better than the button. But that’s only for MY testing. Again, you have to test and see what works for YOU. Everybody will be different. You might want to try the “Download Instantly” text link. See how it compares to the button you were using. It might work better and it might not.

It’s all about testing. There are no absolutes in this business.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to write copy just like the pros? Visit my site at http://www.bcipe.com/ and discover killer copywriting tips that have allowed me to write my own copy for years and earn myself a 6 figure a year income selling my own products.

It absolutely drives me nuts some of the things that home business owners do. I’d like to think that everybody on this planet was given the same amount of brains, but with some of the decisions that I’ve seen people make, I really have to wonder. Sometimes all it takes is a little common sense to figure out what to do about a problem or business decision. This article is going to explain in a way that I hope is clear to everybody.

Let’s start with one of my biggest pet peeves. This is the one where a person is deciding on what kind of a home business to start. So they go online and begin looking for opportunities and run into something that reads like this.

“You can start this business with ZERO startup costs, no inventory, no product to sell, no advertising required and make $30,000 within your first 60 days.”

Now come on folks. Use a little common sense. What business in the real world will give you that kind of opportunity that isn’t on the run from the law? Rule number one on starting a home business. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And yet, people fall for these schemes everyday. Trust me, there is NO easy money out there. Everything requires work. And the quicker you learn that, the better off you’ll be.

Okay, here’s another one that drives me up the wall where a little common sense will solve the problem nicely. You’re thinking of a way to promote your product. You run into an ad that blatantly says that it is a black hat technique for getting traffic to your site. An alarm should be going off in your head that one of two things are going to happen. Either the technique will stop working at some point in time because once it becomes widely known the clamps will be put on it, OR…it’s flat out illegal and will most likely get you in a boat load of trouble. There are plenty of legit methods to promote a product out there. No need to resort to underhanded tactics.

There’s more I could go over but I think you get the point. If you just sat down and used your head for something more than a hat rack, most of the problems you encountered could be easily solved and problems could be easily avoided. But I guess as long as there is greed in this world, people will believe that you can make money from nothing and that you can do anything you want and get away with it.

The poor houses and jails are filled with tons of those people.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

In case you haven’t been paying attention, a lot of things have been going down the last few months. Google has made some serious changes in regard to review sites and the FTC has basically declared war on testimonials without full disclosure. And if you go back through history long enough (made for AdSense sites for starters) this sort of thing has been going on all the time. Businesses have crumbled because of one little change. The question I’m asking you today is this. Are you concerned that YOURS could be next? If you are, you might want to read this article.

There is only one reason that a marketer has to worry about this sort of thing happening. That’s when they have all their eggs in one basket. For example, let’s say you rely on all your income coming from AdSense sites and one day, for whatever reason, Google disables your AdSense account. What then? What if you rely on all your income coming from one super affiliate and then one day that affiliate decides to stop selling your products? What if you only have one product and a change in technology makes that product obsolete? What happens then?

I think you get the general drift that I’m floating out there. It’s dangerous to rely on only one source or means of income. I don’t care how great your product is or how super your affiliate is. Things can happen. Your site can be indexed in Google one day and gone the next. If you think it can’t happen to you, talk to the many marketers who have had that very thing happen to them. There is an old saying that the only thing certain in life is death and taxes.

So take the advice from somebody who has been in the trenches for almost seven years (as of this writing) and has over 30 of his own products as well as ongoing promotions for at least 20 affiliate products. One day, and it can happen at any time, one of your income streams is going to take a major hit. The key to survival is to have a few as backup. The more you have, the more secure you’ll be.

It’s simple advice…but it’s advice you should take quite seriously.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of busting your behind for peanuts online? Go to my web site and find out how I earn a monthly income that exceeds 5 figures and how I can help YOU do the same. Get your free report at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/report.html

I sometimes wonder how Chris Knight is able to sleep at night with all the headaches this man must have. I for one wouldn’t want his business for all the tea in China. Thanks, but I’m very content with my no hassle small home based business that provides very nicely for me and my family. But that’s not the topic of this article. No, this one is all about Chris Knight’s fight for sanity in what has become quite an insane world…at least when it comes to article marketing.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for the past few weeks, it’s quite clear that the status quo over at Ezine Articles is about to be turned into “What happened to my articles and what did you do with Jimmy Hoffa?” Word has it that Chris is actually turning away people who are offering to pay thousands of dollars a year (one report has it at $36,000) to take them as a premium author.

Chris just doesn’t want their business.

One has to wonder why.

Now mind you, I do not have an inside track on the situation, but my gut tells me that I may have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. But first, before I spill my guts, you need to have a little more info.

Seems as if EZA is really cracking the whip on writers. They are now being told to write longer and better articles. The 250 word minimum is about to be thrown out the window. Officially, the TOS of the site hasn’t been changed yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. Any articles that aren’t up to snuff are going to be rejected…no ifs ands or buts.

But it doesn’t stop there. Any old articles that you have out there that no longer conform to the new stricter standards, if reviewed and found substandard, will be put back into “fix it or die” status and become unpublished. Boy, is this gonna put a crimp in a lot of Bum Marketer’s holiday plans.

In addition to that, some topics, like Acai Berry, are going to be off limits. Don’t even try writing for that stuff. The days of the scam products have come to an end.

So what we essentially have is a mass cleanup. Unless you’re certain that your article is going to be good enough to be accepted by a major magazine, don’t hold your breath on your articles getting accepted any time soon.

Okay, what happened? Why the sudden crack down? Did Chris wake up in a bad mood one morning? Well, he might have if it has anything to do with what I think is the culprit. In order to understand my rationale on this, you need to understand something about business. Sadly, this is where a lot of people are lacking…business sense.

I know that to many of us marketers out here, Google and EZA are just playgrounds for us to play in and get dirty. We feel that we can put anything we like online and that’s fine. To an extent, that’s true…as long as we’re talking about putting things on our own sites. We can put anything there we want as long as we’re not breaking any laws.

But Google doesn’t have to index it. That’s THEIR company and they can do whatever THEY want. So if they don’t like your site, for WHATEVER reason…you’re toast.

What does this have to do with EZA?

Well, Chris can put anything on HIS site that he likes as well. However, just as with OUR sites, Google doesn’t have to like it. And judging by some of the crappy articles I have seen up there, my gut tells me that Google has had an earful to say to Chris and his company.

In short, “Clean up your directory or go find another playground to play in.”

See, Chris may be bigger than you and me, but he’s not bigger than a search engine that provides 50% of the traffic that he gets. Thus, the cleanup begins.

But at what cost?

See, the genie has already been let out of the bottle. Frankenstein has made his monster and now we’re trying to find a way to get him back in his cage. Article marketing books all over blatantly recommend to write the shortest, least informative article that you can write and get people to click on your resource box. It’s essentially article marketing 101. And that’s what the herd has been doing.

And it shows.

Go to any keyword phrase you can think of and type it into Google. Search for the first EZA article and read it.

Need I say more?

So now, after abusing the system for so long, and so used to doing it with no repercussions, suddenly, everybody looks up in utter amazement when Chris Knight screams…

“I have had enough of this!”

It’s like a bad Cosby standup routine.

And it gets worse.

See, Chris let this happen in the first place by allowing this garbage into his home. Now that he’s trying to clean it up he’s got people asking, “But why now when this stuff was okay just 3 months ago?”

Good question. For the answer, look to that other big bad boy named Google. See, Chris didn’t so much mind a dirty home as long as the inspectors stayed out of it. But now that the board of health has made its call…well, it’s clean up or close your doors.

In other words folks, it’s Chris or us. And as much as he may like some of us, I don’t think he likes any of us more than he likes to eat.

This isn’t personal. He didn’t wake up one day with a hangnail and decide to take it out on article marketers. He’s simply got no choice in the matter.

What does that mean to us?

Well, it means several things and we have several options.

For starters, it means that if we want to still play in Chris Knight’s home, we have to start writing articles that we wouldn’t be ashamed to let our kids read. Think I’m kidding? Take a look at some of the crap out there.

Or, if we don’t want to put any actual brain power into our writing we can submit those articles to other directories. Or, here’s a novel idea. Why not put those articles on your own blog? My blog has close to 1,300 articles already on it. If Chris decided he no longer wanted my business, I’d survive. There are many other options.

Please understand. This is not personal. This is strictly business. And understand something else. Not having EZA to submit articles to is NOT the end of the world.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is not one site out there, not EZA, not Google, not Twitter, not WordPress, NOBODY…that IF they closed up shop tomorrow, we’d be out of business. There are MANY ways to make money online that do NOT depend on ANY ONE AUTHORITY.

If you don’t understand that, and don’t understand that Chris Knight’s decisions are solely business based then you have no business BEING in business because you obviously have no understanding ABOUT business.

Bottom line: This is what it is. You can adapt or die.

Me? I’m done trying to figure out how to put the genie back in the bottle.

** 11TH Hour Edit **

Chris has allowed me to share this statement with my readers. This is NOT to be reprinted anywhere under any circumstances. Understood?

Good…here it is.

The decision to accelerate our quality standards faster than we normally do have come from pressures I’ve been feeling that we’re letting down our million daily visitors with substandard articles that just don’t cut it any more.

Imagine for a moment that you work hard for a decade to get a million people to come to your party every day, every month with hopes to grow the size of the party… but if the quality of your content isn’t up to par or above par, those millions slowly bleed away to other sites.

We feel immense pressure to protect all of the efforts 200k+ members have invested with us for the benefit of those million daily visitors, and we can’t do it over the long-term if we don’t significantly raise quite a few very specific standards that will be shared in our blog as we work through the data to guide us as to highest perceived return for lowest disruption to ideal members.

Lastly, I may have chosen my words wrong as we’re not in a war with marketers. We’re marketers too and I love sales & marketing personally. The fight is with thin content / derivative article plr rehashed producers who pump us thousands of garbage articles a day and burn up a thousand+ labor hours weekly to sift through what our AI can’t as efficiently yet. In the short-term we’re prepared to take whatever hit we must in order to ensure a happier long-term for our end users. If the end user is happy, all other needs works itself out.

Sincerely,
Chris Knight, CEO

http://EzineArticles.com/

http://AskChristopherKnight.com/

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Want to know what the 7 Deadly Sins of Internet Marketing are? Get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/7deadlysins/7deadlysins.html and save your business from going down the tubes before it even has a chance.

For those of us who are able to just let our business run on autopilot, this article probably won’t have any meaning. But for the rest of us average folks who have to get up everyday and actually put some work into our home business, relying on your memory is probably the worst thing in the world you could do. Personally, my memory stinks. So I write it all down. Yes, keeping a checklist for your home business duties is probably a wise decision. And while all businesses are different, I’m going to include a few generic things that you probably should be doing each day. These are in no particular order.

If you have a business where you sell products or services to people, and these products require some assistance, you probably want to take some time out of your day to check your customer support emails. I usually do this first thing in the morning. That way, nobody has to wait more than 24 hours for a reply. Of course if I can check more than once during the day, that will make it so that I don’t have so much to take care of all at once. Ignoring customer support can seriously hurt your business.

Another thing you probably want to do each day is make sure that all your sites are up and running. Now, if you only have one site, this won’t take too long. Naturally, the more you have, the more time you’ll need to put into this. If a site should happen to be down, make sure you have a way to contact your hosting company. Most of the big ones will have you back up and running quickly.

Then of course there is any promotion that you do on a daily basis. Some things, like PPC, pretty much run on autopilot except for the occasional monitoring to make sure that your campaigns are running smoothly. However, if you do things like article marketing, you will probably want to designate a certain amount of time each day to get this done. So add that to your checklist. What I do is make a checklist of all my daily promotions and just run through them one at a time until they are all finished.

You will add to this list as needed. As I said, each business is going to be different. You may have to do things that I don’t have to do. The point is, the more you have to do, the greater the chance that you will forget something. Whole projects can be forgotten because they weren’t written down, especially planned projects. That’s another thing. You should have one list for daily tasks and another list for planned projects. How you budget your time is up to you.

If you take the advice given in this article, I think you’ll find that your business will run smoother and more efficiently.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!

We all know it went on and probably still does. I’m talking about all the backslapping done in regard to affiliate marketing. You know, you promote my product and I’ll promote yours. It’s as old as the oldest profession. Okay, maybe not THAT old, but it’s old. Well, like it or not, those days are going to be coming to a grinding halt. Why is that you ask? Good question. The answers will be provided.

I’m not going to call out anybody here or mention any names, but go take a look at some of the big boy’s sales pages and you’ll notice something very interesting. Marketer A has a testimonial on HIS page from Marketer B and Marketer B has a testimonial on HIS page from Marketer A. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. And like I said, this has been going on FOREVER. The old boy’s club, as they call it, is about to come crashing down. Why? I’ll explain.

The FTC has just put the lid on testimonials. Requirements for them are going to be a lot tougher than they used to be. Typical results now have to be revealed OR the testimonial itself has to be qualified as in, “This person did such and such to get these results.” When people have to start putting on their sales pages something like this…

“Well, you see…it’s like this. John Doe is really a seven figure a year marketer and the reason he had such great success with my product is because, well…he had like a zillion dollars to spend on advertising. So yeah, that kind of makes a big difference”

…the credibility starts to take a BIG hit. You see where I am going with this, right? If not, let me spell it out.

The reason why affiliate marketers promote each other’s products is BECAUSE of testimonials like these. They KNOW that they’re going to increase sales DRAMATICALLY. So when they email their list or whatever it is they do to promote, it’s almost like printed money. Now that the rules have changed, it’s not going to be so easy to get those sales. So affiliate marketers are going to have to be more select about what they promote. In other words, they’re going to have to start promoting products that are actually good.

Wow…that’s a novel concept.

Personally, I think this is all for the better. It’s about time this industry got cleaned up.

Maybe now we can start selling products that actually DO something.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of being an affiliate failure? Want to turn yourself into an affiliate assassin like I am? Want to land in the top 20 of every affiliate promotion you tackle just like I do? Check out my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/affiliateassassin/index.html and start earning a solid income as an affiliate marketer.

I’ve gotten into some interesting debates on forums, but the other day was pretty much the most interesting of all of them. We were discussing network marketing opportunities and what makes one legit and what makes one not legit? The answers we came up with might surprise a lot of you folks out there. So if you’re not sure, pull up a seat and have a listen…or a good read.

I’m sure you’ve heard of a company by the name of Amway, right? Sure you have. Everybody has. Well, would it surprise you to learn that this “legit” company was at one time warned by the FTC about its business model? It’s true. Now, you’re probably wondering why. Well, in my explanation of what makes a company legit or not, you’ll understand.

It is commonly believed that for a company to be considered legit, they have to sell a viable product. While this is true, it is only part of the story. See, a lot of companies have a structure where somebody IN the company can buy product and thus, by doing so, earn themselves a higher commission base. So in order to keep companies from essentially selling to themselves, there is a rule put in place by the FTC that 70% of the sales made by the company MUST go to the general public. If not, then the company is in danger of being in violation.

There are many companies out there who are treading on thin ice because of this rule. But more importantly, as somebody looking to get into a company like this, how do you REALLY know that they’re legit. You can look at their business model and see that they’re selling a REAL product, but how do you know how much of that product is going out to the general public? You DON’T know…and therein lies the rub. So while you might be thinking that you’re getting in with a legit company, you’re not going to really know without doing some hard digging first.

Things are not as cut and dried as you might think. What may appear to be legit on the surface can be in violation of FTC regulations anyway. So be careful. Do your homework. Make sure you’re getting into a company that’s solid. A good rule of thumb, though not fool proof, is to pick a company that has been around for a while.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business… FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!